Friday, August 30, 2013

So, I've had Lifehacker in my RSS for a while, at first to keep up with new technology and software mostly. I liked that they told you what you could with it, rather than the "OMG-OMG-MUST-HAVE-IT-COOL-COOL-COOL" of sites like CNET and Gizmodo. Then I started trying their home improvement tips, because there were enough that were in my wheelhouse (binder clips and adult Play-Doh yes, soldering and sawing no). I'm a librarian, so I love organizing things. A holiday gift planning Google spreadsheet? Why, yes sir I think I will.

I don't think of it as a lifestyle and try to convert all my friends to the Way of Lifehacking or anything. It's not inherently better thanHints from Heloise or Everyday Cheapskate, it's just that the latter are more likely to tell me to save money by using things I don't have on hand or want to purchase. Your mileage may vary. It can be funny to see the kind of tips women have shared for millennia suddenly become cool because the word "hack" makes it OK for dudes to talk about laundry and housework, but whatever.

Of course, if lifehacking is a movement, there must be the inevitable backlash. This guy seems to think lifehacking is an evil plot to take our sleep away and turn us into the worker-robot tools of Capitalism. Hey, my goal to sleep as much as possible has not changed a bit since I started reading Lifehacker. The nature of lifehacks is that there are always going to be some I think are just insane, but might be right for you. There's no way I will spend time making my own laundry detergent or use a computer to turn my lights off and on, but you might find it enjoyable. It is possible I suppose that a large part of the population is being brainwashed into a scary deviant lifehacking lifestyle that forces them to do things they don't enjoy, work more and sleep less, but Mr. Morozov fails to convince me of it. It's true that there are strains of Dale Carnegie and Frederick Winslow Taylor in lifehacking, but there are also strains of Buddhism, The Whole Earth Catalog, Punk D.I.Y., Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics, and the Maker movement. It reminds me of the way hardcore punk pioneers The Bad Brains were inspired by Think and Grow Rich. That's the United States for ya, we like to mix and match our philosophies.

And another thing, it's fun to see what's on other people's desks and in their bags. Here are mine for your perusal: